Software Finds Sweet Home Here

March 20, 1988|By Daniel Brogan.

Every time Marc Canter takes a business trip, he gets asked when he`s moving to Silicon Valley.

Canter`s MacroMind Inc. is one of the small companies developing software for Apple Computer Inc.`s Macintosh. VideoWorks II, the company`s best-known product, brings to the Mac many of the animation tools previously available only on professional video systems.

A move to the San Francisco Bay area would offer frequent networking opportunities. It would also put Canter just a few hours away from Hollywood, where VideoWorks II has developed a following. But Canter just laughs at the prospect of uprooting MacroMind from its North Side home. The company was founded in 1984 with 4 employees; there are now 22.

``There`s no better place for us,`` Canter said. ``On a personal level, Chicago is where I`m from; it`s where I`m comfortable. On a professional level, Chicago is one of the reasons we`ve survived as a company.``

That`s a sentiment shared by plenty of other Chicago-based software developers, who say that the area is quickly emerging as a hotbed of success and innovation capable of rivaling California`s Silicon Valley and Boston`s Route 128 Corridor.

One of the area`s strong points is an abundance of programming talent, developers agree.

``From a technical point of view, this is an excellent climate for a software company,`` said Mark Goldberg, president and owner of Timeworks, a Deerfield-based firm. Timeworks produces a diverse line of software products aimed at the home and small-business users of International Business Machines Corp., Apple, Commodore Business Machines Inc. and Atari Corp. computers. Founded in 1983 with 5 employees, the company now boasts 100 employees.

``You just look at all the computer science and mathematics programs at all the universities and colleges in this area and you realize that we have no problems finding quality people,`` Goldberg said. Goldberg and other developers point to the University of Chicago, Northwestern University in Evanston, the University of Illinois (both the Chicago campus and the supercomputer center on the Urbana-Champaign campus) and the DeVry Institute of Technology as fertile pools of talent.

That`s a luxury that other areas don`t have, said Daniel Cheifetz, president and founder of Northbrook-based Odesta Corp. The company`s Helix line of databases is on the cutting edge of the push to link Macs and Digital Equipment Corp.`s VAX mini-computers.

``You go out to Silicon Valley, and you`ll find that talent is quite scarce,`` Cheifetz said.

Goldberg added that only the Boston area can rival Chicago in educational support to a software community.

Canter noted that the Chicago area is blessed with another source of talent: video games.

``People forget that Chicago was perhaps the major center of video game activity,`` he said. ``Chicago was the home of Bally, Williams, Tateo, Gottlieb and Stern. When the video game bubble burst, there was suddenly an ample supply of hot-shot, assembly language, multitasking operating system programmers. That`s what MacroMind is built on. So there`s a lot of really good technological people out here.``

That abundance of talent also contributes to the generally lower cost of doing business in the Chicago area.

``You don`t have the kind of talent raiding out here that you see in Silicon Valley,`` Goldberg said. ``That means that we`re not paying our people the kind of oddball salaries that you get from those kinds of bidding wars. That`s an important consideration.``

Other costs are lower, as well. MacroMind, for example, operates out of two buildings about a block apart on West Wolfram Avenue. ``For both spaces combined we pay $1,100 a month,`` Canter said. ``You couldn`t get a studio for that in San Francisco or Boston.``

For a company like MacroMind, which started life without any outside venture funding, those kinds of savings can be the difference between success and failure. ``If our overhead had been 10 or 20 percent higher during the last few years, we wouldn`t have survived,`` Canter said.

While venture capital has become more scarce for personal computer-related companies in recent years, there is still funding to be had for the best and the brightest. MacroMind, for example, is being approached by several venture firms that would like to help it expand.

Over the long haul, software developers also expect to profit from good, old-fashioned Midwest stability.

``Is this a good place to run a software company?`` Cheifetz asks. ``That depends on what you`re after. If you`re into groovy lifestyles and being cool and all sorts of nouveau trends, it`s not so nice. But if you`re interested in putting together a solid business and making a good profit, well, that`s a different matter.``